In 2017, the Department of Geography at the University of Guelph welcomed alumni, past faculty and staff and its current faculty, staff and students to an event marking its 50 year anniversary. Such an event creates, naturally, a moment for looking back with fondness and ahead with anticipation. This document has been prepared with the latter very much in mind.
As the Department enters its second half century we believe the time is right to renew and reinvigorate the “Geography at Guelph” brand – starting with the name of the unit itself. The Department is excited to announce that, effective June 1, 2018, the unit has been renamed as the Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics. The new name:
- Reflects contemporary developments in the discipline of geography and in the positioning of academic geography in the higher education landscape in Canada.
- Speaks directly and factually to the strengths and focus of departmental programs and personnel with an accurate nomenclature that represents the totality of its scholarly activities, including teaching, research, and engagement with policy makers and civil society.
- Resonates with the strategic priorities of the University’s Strategic Mandate Agreement and Strategic Research Plan and the College of Social and Applied Science’s recent strategic plan.
- Clarifies for prospective students the focus of the programs in geography, environment, and geomatics and our distinctiveness within the Ontario post- secondary system.
- Responds to a key finding from a recent survey of undergraduate geography students who expressed a desire for greater degree differentiation through the renaming of the department.
- Identifies and more robustly communicates the specific and focused contributions (past, current and potential) of this department to the wider sweep of environment-related scholarship across the university, by highlighting its specific interest in the integration of natural, physical, and social sciences.
- Assists the department in making a more externally discernable, and thus impactful, contribution to the promulgation of an already formidable “Environment at Guelph” presence in the Ontario and Canadian university sector.
Why “Geography, Environment and Geomatics”?
The chosen name arises naturally from simply recognizing “what we currently are” (and have long been) and where we intend to go. It is also informed by the need for discernable differentiation in the Ontario and Canadian university level geography landscape.
Currently, the department leads or collaborates in the delivery of 5 undergraduate majors:
- Geography: BA (Human-Environment relations)
- Environmental Governance: BA
- Environmental Geoscience and Geomatics: BSc
- Environment and Resource Management: BSc(env)
- International Development: BA (specialization in Environment and Development)
At the graduate level the department offers both MA and MSc, with a focus on Human-Environment Geography in the former and Environmental Geoscience and Geomatics in the latter case. A new professional masters in Conservation Leadership and Governance is in the early stage of development. Finally, the PhD program offers opportunities for advanced research in the areas of socio-economic spaces and change, environmental governance and management, and biophysical systems and processes.
On the research side, we invite you to know our work better by exploring the profiles of our faculty, posted in the “Our People” section of the web page. In scanning our roster of scholar/researchers you will discover that the environment in its many forms is pervasive in our collective scholarship and that the use of spatial analytic methods underpins many of our efforts. Across various “science traditions”, modes of inquiry and diverse thematic concerns in both the natural and human realms, the environment is a thread that runs through each, and connects all.
As the department enters its next 50 years, we are pleased and proud to feature a name that honours our past, confirms and champions the identity and reach of the department of the present, and makes more externally visible something that is understood as a longstanding reality by those within the departmental community. Geography and Geographers are an active and accomplished part of the University of Guelph’s diverse environment portfolio with much to contribute to its collective relevance in environmental scholarship and leadership. We look forward to sustaining and expanding those contributions through our own efforts and in collaboration with partners both within and beyond the University of Guelph for many years to come!